After the Dust Settles
by steepedinshadows419
Summary: September 11, 2021 - Twenty years after the terrorist attack in New York City, Barry is brought face-to-face with the life-changing events a Central City citizen still experiences as a ripple effect to that day. One-shot.


**A/N:** 9/11 is such an emotional day for me. I didn't lose anyone that day, and I don't know anyone who did. But the event itself if just so horrendous that I'm always affected by it. I watch the movie 'World Trade Center' every year on this day as a way to reflect and remember the people who were lost. I felt very inspired to write a Flash fic involving those events a couple years back, but I thought up the idea too late, and I didn't want to post it weeks, if not months, after 9/11, so I put it aside thinking maybe...someday. Well, someday is today!

 **Trigger warning:** As stated above (and in the summary), this fic 100% focuses on the events of 9/11/01. I did my best to be as sensitive as possible to all concerned. If you're starting to feel uneasy already as you read this disclaimer, maybe this isn't the fic for you.

 ***** Many thanks to **sendtherain** and **hamaheaven** for looking this over for me. You're truly the best. 3

 ***** I own nothing. No copyright infringement intended.

* * *

The warm, autumn sun woke Barry up as it did every morning. A little groggy with some sleep dust in his eyes, but inevitably eager to make Iris breakfast as soon as he spotted her still fast asleep beside him.

But this morning when he opened his eyes, he saw she wasn't fast asleep. She was propped up in bed, leaning back against the headboard. There was an incredibly troubling look at her face and what looked to be tears in her eyes. But she didn't register him watching her because she was staring so intently at something on her phone.

He sat up slowly next to her, gently brushing his arm against hers so as not to startle her. She was startled anyway, but when she turned to look at him, she took one earbud out of her ear and handed it to him. Then she tilted her phone in his direction. He put the bud in his ear without question and directed his gaze at the video playing on the screen.

His heart broke as much as hers must've. They knew no one personally who had been at the scene of that horrendous terrorist attack, but that didn't make it any easier to bear.

"Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center towers in New York City. Over 2700 United States citizens died in the attack, 3500 including those from other countries, and even now there are many people that simply no remains have been found…"

The reporter continued on, giving details of what had presumably led to the attack, the exact details of the morning it happened, and what happened after, including the war on terror. Amidst all this was video footage of the towers being hit and collapsing, people running in terror, the loved ones of victims crying and sharing their stories. A detailed list of where all the memorial services were being held that day followed.

Iris sighed and leaned her head on her husband's shoulder.

"It's so awful, isn't it?"

He pressed the home button on her phone to exit out of the hard-to-watch videos and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. Iris set her phone down on the bed between them and laced her fingers through Barry's.

"All these years later, and it just…it was the beginning of so many terrible attacks…and then adding metas on top of that?" She sighed, overwhelmed. "If there hadn't been so much coming together afterwards, there would probably be very little hope in the world. At least…" She glanced up at him. "Until the Flash arrived."

His concentrated frown worried her. "What is it?"

"Sometimes I think about going back," he admitted.

She straightened immediately. "Barry, don't-"

"I'm not going to do it, Iris," he said calmly, then turned to her. "It's just something I think about." He shrugged. "Could more lives have been saved if the Flash was there to get people out of those buildings before they collapsed? With Kid Flash and Jesse Quick and our daughter helping too?"

"Now you're mixing the past and the future," she tried to joke, but the train of thought still worried her.

"And what about Kara?" he added. "She can literally stop planes in mid-air. She could have prevented the attacks altogether."

Iris smiled sadly and reached to touch his face.

"Would our world be a better place now if that event had been prevented?"

She sighed, her hand dropping to his chest.

"I don't know. Maybe. Maybe something worse would have happened. You just don't know the future until it happens to you." He raised an eyebrow at her. "At least for most people," she muttered.

He laughed a little, though it felt wrong to do so. Then he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and held her to him for a long while in silence.

…

Barry Allen, CSI forensic scientist was needed more than the Flash that morning. Joe had called him in while Barry and Iris were quietly eating breakfast, still dwelling on the significance of the day. Some criminal had escaped, was wanted for all sorts of petty crimes, and one really big one: murder, at a bank when he was trying to rob it. It didn't look like a meta this time, which was a relief. This one would be routine. Hopefully they would catch the guy before he left town.

Barry and Joe returned to CCPD together after all the evidence had been gathered. They were about to go their separate ways – Barry to his lab and Joe to his desk – when a young woman tore out of Singh's office, looking royally pissed off. Singh called after her, but since she hadn't done anything wrong, inevitably he let her go.

"Who was that?" he asked Joe. She looked familiar, but he couldn't place how.

"Her name's Ayda. She's a few years younger than you and Iris. She went to the same elementary school. Her dad owned a candy shop downtown."

"Ol' Papa's, that's right!" Barry said cheerfully. "I remember now." He sobered up when he realized Joe was still very serious.

"Her mother worked in the Trade Center."

Barry's heart plummeted, along with his smile and his sudden good mood.

"Ayda's father didn't handle it well, and one day he just left. No one could find him. Ayda went into foster services, and no one claimed her. No foster parent wanted her because she looked like-"

Barry's eyes widened. " _No_."

Joe sighed, the memory of that time washing over him in terrible, agonizing waves.

"The police chief we had at the time was of the many in those early years who assumed that if you looked like an Arab, there was a high chance you were either a part of the 9/11 attack or would attack in the future. Since attacks kept coming, he felt justified in his vindication and tried to persuade the whole city to feel the same. Enough did that she was never adopted."

"What about you?" he asked, horrified.

"I talked to a few other detectives, the ones that hadn't been brainwashed, but I didn't push the chief as much as I should have. I had two mouths at home to feed besides my own. I was working over time and still barely making ends meet. I couldn't afford to lose my job by saying the wrong thing."

"Oh, Joe."

There wasn't disappointment in Barry's voice, but Joe was still sinking into himself more than he'd been a minute ago.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought it up."

"No, it's good you did." He inhaled and exhaled slowly. "Eventually it was uncovered that the chief wasn't just placing the blame on every Arab-looking citizen in Central City, he was also blackmailing the ones he hadn't touched yet with everything he wanted of theirs that they owned – houses, cars, money, you name it."

"Oh, my God."

"If they didn't comply, he added them to the list. Many ended up leaving the city in hopes of a safer place to live. I have to tell you, Barry, the early 2000s was not a good look for Central City."

He swallowed hard. "So, what happened?"

"When I discovered the blackmail, I convinced the remaining good guys on the force to act on it with me. The chief had so many people wrapped around his finger, but we managed to overpower him by manipulating him to confess while on camera. Then those in the city who hadn't turned a blind eye to what he was doing or agreed with it, came forward to demand he resign. He has forced out of office and left town, apparently got in a car crash not five miles out of town and died on impact."

"That's convenient." Barry eyed his suspiciously.

"I try not to think about it," Joe said. "Anyway, Ayda has come in here every year since she turned eighteen to demand an update on the search for her missing father. We never have good news to tell her, because with everything else going on, time just hasn't allowed for us to make it a priority. Besides, it's been twenty years."

"But he's her only family," Barry said softly.

"I know," Joe returned the softness.

"Is she doing well otherwise?" Barry asked.

Joe shrugged. "I don't know much, but I don't think so. People don't reject her the way they did when she was a kid, but with finding her dad as her top priority, she doesn't make other things her priority the way she maybe should sometimes."

"Such as?"

"Such as keeping a job, making sure she eats, has a roof over her head."

"Jesus, Joe."

"I know, I know. But she refuses help. All she wants is for us to find her father. For a good month or two, Singh will probably assign a new task force to the case, as he does almost every year. But there are other, I hate to say it, more pressing matters to attend to. When nothing turns up by Thanksgiving, he'll probably drop it until she comes in to make more demands next year. The fact of the matter is, her father probably got out of the country and is living a new life somewhere else, trying to put the past behind him-"

"Including his daughter?"

"Or he didn't make it that far, was killed…either by someone else's doing or his own."

"You really think…?"

"He was in a really bad place when he disappeared. Not to mention there was a lot of shady, covered-up shit happening around the time Chief Dolan was in office. We've brought a lot of those victims to justice, but there are still many that haven't gotten there yet."

Barry shuddered. "I didn't realize Central City had such a…dark past."

"I tried to shield it from you kids. In fact, a lot of parents, regardless of their beliefs, tried to shield it from their children. Some didn't. It's how Ayda and other kids like her ended up being bullied."

Barry had sunk so far inside himself he didn't know if he could climb out of it.

"And I thought those videos were the only thing that was going to make this day hard to get through," he mumbled.

Joe's brows furrowed. "What videos?"

Barry brushed it off. "Oh, you know, the internet is recapping the events of 9/11. Everyone is sharing their story again. So many hearts are still broken, and the footage of the actual towers coming down, it's…"

"Yeah," Joe agreed. "I know."

"Well," he said after a while, clearing his throat. "I should, uh-"

"Oh, yeah, of course. I'll see you later."

…

Later that day, Flash was making his rounds. There hadn't been too much crime after the robbery incident. The guy had even been caught. Memorials were taking place around the city and many people had come and gone from the cemetery. Everywhere Barry went, things felt heavy. Not as heavy as they'd felt that morning when he was with Iris and then again with Joe, but it was still so somber being in the middle of all of this.

After confirmation from Cisco that crime was essentially nonexistent, Barry was about to head home when he spotted a familiar face leaning against the leg of the bridge on the dingier side of Central City.

He ran to her and came to a stop. She glanced over at him, briefly startled but then subdued once more.

"Well, hello, Flash. What did I do to receive such an honored guest?"

"Ayda."

She glanced at him, surprised.

"You know my name."

"I know-"

"Oh, wait, of course you do. Unless you're an actual alien and didn't live here twenty years ago, it's impossible for you not to know who I am."

He was silent for a beat. "Ayda, I am so sorry for what happened to your family."

She tensed. "They're dead." She looked away. "At least my mother is. My father…"

He took a hesitant step towards her. "I know it's hard-"

"Hard?" Her eyes blazed. "It's fucking devastating. You have no idea what it's like, to be rejected for the color of your skin, for people to think you're a terrorist at eight years old, for your dad to-" She shook her head. "Your red suit doesn't hide how white you are. And you are praised by the city, not condemned by it."

"I wasn't always," he said, though he knew a lot of what she said was true. He could relate to parental deaths. Everything else? Not so much. "Both my parents were murdered. My mom died the year before yours. And my dad left…"

She swallowed hard. It looked like he was maybe getting through to her.

"You think my dad is dead? Is that what you're trying to say? Well, every case does not go the way yours did, _Flash_."

She turned away from him, making for her exit. He didn't try to speed ahead of her.

"My dad came back," he said.

That made her stop. She turned to look at him.

"What?"

"We didn't find him because he'd been murdered. We found him because he'd been set free. He was killed later…by someone else."

She ran back to him.

"You think he's kidnapped maybe? That he's been held hostage this whole time? For twenty years?"

He hesitated, knowing this was both good and bad. He'd given her hope. He just didn't want it to be the false kind. If this line of thinking didn't lead anywhere good, she'd fall down a darker path than she was already on.

"It's…possible." He paused. " _Anything_ is possible."

She sunk into herself a little. "So it's possible he's dead too."

"Ayda… A few times after my dad was…kidnapped, I was allowed to talk to him."

"Oh, my God."

She was clearly startled by that. He didn't blame her. How often did someone get to have full conversations with the person being contact when it wasn't used as a means to convince someone to give ransom? He'd just been a kid.

"He told me…that I was obsessing, that I wasn't living, because all I cared about was saving him."

She scoffed. "But he was kidnapped."

His lips twisted ruefully. "I know. That's how I felt."

"How could he-"

"He'd accepted his fate. Or, what he thought his fate was, I guess."

"Obviously you didn't listen to him."

"I didn't give up on him."

"So, you understand-"

"But I did try to really live in the meantime."

Her lips thinned. She didn't like that.

"Ayda, all I'm saying is…if your father could see you now, he probably would be proud of you for fighting for him, but…I think it would break his heart to see the way you're living."

Her eyebrows narrowed. "The way I'm living," she said flatly.

"In between jobs, no roof over your head, no new clothes, scrounging for food… That's not-" He paused. "That's not a life."

"It's none of your business how I live my life, Flash. Maybe you'd better move on to the next person in need of saving, because it isn't me."

He hesitated, his failure unacceptable, her hurt seemingly impenetrable.

"What if I agreed to help you?" he offered, hearing Joe's berating repeated 'no, no, no, no' in his head as he said it.

"What are you talking about?" she asked, annoyed.

"Your father. What if _I_ helped to find him too?"

She gasped, and he could see the reluctant hope fill her eyes.

"You would do that? But…what if he's not here? What if he's overseas?"

That almost made him laugh. He allowed himself to smile.

"I'm really fast."

…

Back at STAR Labs, everyone proceeded to throw him death glares.

"You did what?" barked Joe, expectedly.

Barry winced and rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly.

"I know you mean well, babe, but…" Iris slowly approached him. "Are you sure she _wants_ your help? What if you get her hopes up? What if you can't find him? What if he's dead?"

"What if he isn't?" He took a breath. "Look, I know you guys think this is crazy. And it is, okay? It is. But today is just so…it's awful. I know I save people every day, but I didn't save anybody that day. I was just a kid. And I understand where she's coming from. And you know, maybe I don't find him. But in the meantime, she's agreed to really try to keep a job. I'm going to get her a place to stay and food until she can pay for it herself, and if she makes friends, finds someone special…maybe even the worst news in the world won't be worth risking everything that she's found."

The team still appeared reluctant.

"We have no Big Bad right now, guys. Can we spend some time just…trying?"

Resigned, Joe nodded. "All right, Bear. I can get you the files we have on Ayda's dad at the precinct."

"And I can do some digging on him from that," Iris offered.

"I do have some pretty epic tech right now that might help with a missing person's case," Cisco said, not without a hint of pride.

"And we have a state-of-the-art lab here," Caitlin concluded. "We can test anything and everything without getting the police suspicious."

" _I'm_ police," Joe said flatly.

"But you're our police," she said sweetly, to which he snorted but agreed.

"We're doing this then?" Barry asked excitedly.

Iris came to him and held his hands tightly. "We're doing it."

He grinned widely, ignoring how badly this could go if his claim to help ended up nowhere. He believed in Ayda. Deep down he knew they all did. If she could build a life for herself, that would be her doing. It would be something she could be proud of, relationships she didn't want to lose. And if the news regarding her father was bad, she would have the support of those she'd grown to love and who loved her. And she would have the Flash.

On more than one occasion, he'd been told he couldn't save everyone, and that he needed to accept that. But he could save some.

He could save Ayda.

* * *

 _"…9-11 showed us what human beings are capable of. The evil, yeah, sure, but it also brought out the goodness we forgot could exist. People taking care of each other…for no other reason than it was the right thing to do. It's important for us to talk about that good, to remember. Because I saw a lot of it that day."_

 _– John McLoughlin (World Trade Center, 2006)_


End file.
